Narakunomicon
by Dr. Abraxas
Summary: A collector tracks down the last real Inuyasha story of an obscure fanfiction writer. The story is shrouded by mystery, it may have killed people who read it, but it's such a simple little story, what could be its secret?


ETA: Off site I've gotten feedback imploring me to write another Narakunomicon; well, I'm going to do this, I'm going to borrow a page out of the annoying author handbook. I won't write another chapter until I get at least 10 new flames! time to start teh hate peoplez! flamies - I know you don't have a life if all you do is follow **this **story make it interesting and I'll show it off on my LJ. And I want good flames, too, lame flames will not count. PS - no anon flames either, grow a spine and show yourself.

A/N: OK...this is it, officially, my last real Inuyasha fic. I'm not leaving the fandom or anything like that, I'm still a member of iyhedonism and other comms so I'll be writing drabbles whenever inspiration strikes. I just can't do big Inuyasha fics. I don't have the time, energy and, to be honest, I think I wrote everything I wanted to. I'd like to focus my efforts at Avatar actually :D Maybe an original too.

Now, yeah, _this_ story. People won't like it, it'll be misinterpreted and flamed and all of that. What I fear, though, is that people won't realize it's an Inuyasha fic. That can't be helped. I chose to do it like this. Also, it's not an ego trip despite it being a very bizarre kind of author-insert-fic where I don't appear. (Incidentally, I name drop a few of you on my f-list, it's my way of immortalizing you all). The story is about a guy who's telling the story about a guy confessing a story (part of which is about a guy telling yet another story). It's full of little Easter eggs too like the gay Indian/Cowboy and a bit of Avatar stuff. And Koga appears.

I've been working with this idea on and off for a year at least. I kept writing and re-writing the outline. I know I posted it as a challenge. The furthest along I got was when I wrote fragments of scenes (which appear throughout this text) but I just couldn't figure out how to actually write the damn thing start to finish. That was...until inspiration struck while traveling to Georgia. :)

Also, I need to give kudos to Salome Wilde, what gets 'revealed' at the end is inspired by a drabble she wrote about Naraku.

* * *

**"Narakunomicon" by Abraxas (2008-11-20)**

friends:

No doubt you heard of the death of my friend and partner, Jammie Yue, under mysterious and strange circumstances. The media throughout the Pacific covered the story a few days then dropped it without granting it anything like a fair presentation. To them, he was yet another nut who ended everything by jumping out of a plane - nothing less and nothing more than a crazy.

I loathe to endure that trashing by ignorant, sensationalist media.

Of course you all know him. Jammie - my napatak - was a kind, loving man. If he could be faulted for anything it was a limitless almost obsessive curiosity. Alone now, suddenly and unexpectedly, since the moment I received _the call_, it is difficult to maintain composure - were it not for my family and you all I would be lost too.

I believe Jammie was already dead when he ejected. What kind of power it was that animated his body those last violent moments _it was not him_! It was not him. It was something alien, something beyond man's understanding. Yes, I know what I say resembles lunacy - but what am I to do?

It is hard to accept Jammie's death so forgive me if my belief appears to be ridiculous.

I know he was killed by curiosity.

Jammie's drive to know the truth was like a kind of mania.

What happened next - what do I know? - it could have been the natural urge of a body, devoid of its soul, to end its suffering.

Imagine it - an idea, just a few scattered words, capable of killing those who think it?

There exist traces of proof that I could be right. Part of it comes from the testimony of passengers describing his zombie-like appearance coupled with his furious and inhuman strength. Part of it, too, comes from what he learned reading a book along that flight.

I read Jammie's last transmitted email. He was writing it prior to that event. I did not tell the authorities about it. It would have been pointless. Words tend to be wasted with people like that. Only those familiar with his interests would be able to understand it.

This is the email presented without edit:

* * *

Sokkie, my sweet sweet Eskimo thing, _I found it_! Oh, lord, I can't believe the luck. I can't believe it, I can't believe it!

You've got no idea how long, how hard I've searched. All those years I feared wasted, with friends - and you - telling me to back off it. That it was a rumor, a myth, a story concocted maybe by Abraxas just to confound readers. But! But! But! I always knew it existed. Didn't I say I always knew it existed? Yes, Sokkie, I always knew it existed.

Not that I want to gloat :P

Oh, Sokkie, to see it! To feel it! It's incredible that it's sitting on my lap, that it's held by my hands. Don't wake me, please, I cannot survive if this is a dream - no - I will not endure a world where this is illusion.

It must be real. The book, it's thick and heavy. It's well-read too. Yes, it is real. It exists and I, perhaps alone, I possess its knowledge.

Sokkie, I speak of Abraxas' last, complete Inuyasha story. That mad, crazed 'Narakunomicon'. I know I told you about it. Certainly, you know, Abraxas? I grew up reading his obscure dark!fiction about Thundercats. It shaped my own literary idiosyncrasies. True, he was not a well-known or prolific figure but there was a flavor about those twisted, sick stories that always drew me into a world of insanity unlike any other author of that genre.

You know I wonder about Abraxas.

Was he crazy? I mean - yeah - was he crazy? A mad-scientist concocting plots to rule the world? A loon raving through a straightjacket about god-knows-what? I don't like to go that route and it pains me to be thinking about it but more and more I find myself considering, really I mean really considering, the possibility...I mean nobody writing this stuff could be normal.

Anyway...Thundercats - that I admit is where my knowledge of Abraxas started and ended. I felt I knew everything. What could be left? So I went off to pursue my degree in English and soon I fell in love with other writers of that kind. Cheezey, Fenikkusuken, Forthright, Gakusei, Inusaga, Purrsia, Salome Wilde and Snowfall. These people provided years of study and pleasure.

And then, while teaching English in Japan, I investigated a used manga and anime store popular with my students. There, within its labyrinth of well-stocked shelves.... There, between books centuries - _centuries_! - old.... It was a yellow and green little tome, the sort of colors that take my attention, and I took it and I read it. I was stunned to discovered it was written by Abraxas. Imagine that! An obscure fanfiction author translated into Japanese and sitting amid Tanizaki and Mishima! But that was only the start of it. Because when I read its contents I realized it wasn't Thundercats! It was a book titled 'Hedonism' - a series of short, oneshot pieces based on _Inuyasha_.

Epiphany!

Out of dark into light. My eyes were open to the fact that Abraxas was not constrained just to Thundercats. He also wrote Inuyasha. Digging deeper and deeper into that library yielded other, little treasures and I discovered he was associated with a myriad of other, Japanese fandoms.

My affair with the dark resumed. I compiled a trove of books. I amassed a list of facts. I learned what I thought was impossible and I felt ashamed that I allowed myself to wallow so ignorantly about Abraxas....

Like a man starved I gorged....

I learned that what I knew about the man was very little indeed.

He was not American by birth but he spent so long within the states that it was not possible to tell the nature of his origin. He was a physicist yet avoided the life of research and development. He was raised and educated in New York/New Jersey until he escaped west - specifically the state of Montana where he taught at the Helena College of Technology.

Abraxas lived as if he were a hermit, unconnected to the world - mysterious and enigmatic.

Is that not the picture of a madman?

And get this, Sokkie, there's a controversy about his death. Did it happen in 2035 or 2076? Isn't it incredible in that day and age? He and a man (Koga?) just vanished. Officially, he died in 2035, yet there is evidence he was active well into the second-half of that century.

Strangely enough I think he arranged this discrepancy. Figures that he'd want to be unnoticed. So much so that he'd fake death just to get away.

Or, could it be, that he faked death completely?

Oh, Sokkie, I thought his work with Thundercats was his ultimate artistic achievement. I did not realize what trove of treasure the Inuyasha fiction proved to be! The weirdness that I knew was nothing but a foreshadowing of the twisted and sick universe yet to unfold. Stalkers raping victims through their clothes? Men pursuing penis-tattooing fetishes? Demons stuffing - _anally_ - children? Where but the depth of depravity came such imagination?

Stoked, I set off to investigate what remained of the man's world. I wanted to understand what impelled his thoughts. His ideas! What could have inspired it. Or - if it was so fated - I wanted to understand if he was insane. An undiagnosed yet functional schizophrenic.

Perhaps notebooks and such could have shed light....

By searching through records I discovered the location of a homestead. A realm of a hundred, forested acres toward the border between Montana and the Dakotas. He shared that land with Koga and, when they officially died, it was given to a neighboring Lakota tribe (relatives of Koga?). I was struck by the similarity between that revelation and a plot of a work of the 'Hedonism' collection. Nevertheless - I was pleased to know the tribe preserved the home the two men shared and I was allowed to explore it....

I was struck by the prominence of wolves throughout the bungalow. Within there were paintings of wolves; sculptures, figurines, carvings of various sizes and composition. Without there were the howls of wolves which seemed to come nearer and nearer as time passed. I was not put-off, however, I was too steeped into research to be afraid!

There was a library and, within a tiny, little closet, there was a box of notebooks.

Abraxas suffered from a love/hate relationship with technology. He didn't trust computers enough to store his work electronically exclusively. Contrary to the norm of the time, he worked with pencil and paper, then typed. He edited stories as drafts copied from notebook to notebook - I found at least three complete drafts whenever he toiled with a story. It must have been torture....

I was disappointed by what I didn't find. Abraxas' notebooks were devoid of insightful and extraneous information. There were a lot of ideas. Some of which were detailed. Some of which I recognized as plots of stories. A few outlines seemed to be abandoned. Every so often I found a drabble completed yet unpublished. But - while there were ideas there were no details about what inspired those ideas!

Oh, lord, I was salivating anyway.

Just when I thought my search was complete - the howling of the wolves increasing into frenzy - I found something that took my breath away!

Throughout several notebooks, across years of writing, Abraxas jotted the outline of what he called his 'last, real Inuyasha fic'. I arranged the papers chronologically and followed the progression of the plot. I was intrigued by it. It was, almost from the onset, his most exact and detailed outline. It involved his most favorite themes which had been touched slightly here and there by such works as 'Transchronogenesis' and 'One Million Years'. It was about the future, yes, set within a world at the edge of the galaxy. It was a story about fate - doomed fate to be certain - immortality, reincarnation, lifetimes interconnected across all time and space and about the way humanity itself changed....

It seemed to be a blend of Wells, Poe and Orwell with a sprinkle of Lovecraft.

I needed to find that story. I needed to read it. God - I hoped he wrote the damn thing -

It was titled 'Narakunomicon' - a remix of a title he was fond of using.

I wondered if that book existed in the Japanese market. (By that time I already located a Japanese manga version of the 'Reflections of a Pink Desert'.) Abraxas was famed abroad especially with the Japanese because of Inuyasha and other anime fandoms he associated with. It was such a rabid kind of mania that the Japanese thought Abraxas _was_ Japanese.

I contacted Iroh, my friend who owned that used manga and anime store in Tokyo, and when I dropped the title and author I wanted there was such a pause I thought I dropped the call.

Iroh spoke through a whisper that, I admit, froze the blood of my body. He warned me not to seek that book. Of course I pressed and he revealed - it was dangerous, lethal, it was a monstrosity unlike any other book. That only peaked the curiosity - now I inquired further but he would not budge. He ended the call repeating and imploring me not to go there....

Sokkie baby, well, what do you suppose happened?

It only forced me to dig. I needed to know why anyone would have thought a book was so dangerous!

I knew if that book were published, it would have been found in Japan. Perhaps it had been turned into manga. Perhaps a part of it was infused into anime. It's a common practice to recycle plots....

Little by little my web of contacts gathered clues.

Meanwhile - I read and read and read (again) the notebooks I copied that night at the bungalow.

Abraxas was obsessed with that storyline. It seemed it took years to write the 'Narakunomicon'. Even after he abandoned Inuyasha and turned toward Avatar. He always returned to that plot, even when there wouldn't be anyone to appreciate the fandom, he worked the details of it tirelessly. There were descriptions of settings, interactions, dialogues. There were step-by-step instructions - like a director's storyboard laid out start to end - yet there were no suggestions of what the final product was like....

Nevertheless, it was published, Iroh's reaction proved it.

But that it was unknown to America - and that it was rare in Japan - suggested it was not popular. Maybe its theme was too dark? Maybe its birth came too late? So, so many years passed that Inuyasha faded into obscurity.

And then I learned why Iroh feared it!

A legend emerged about that 'last, real Inuyasha fic'. A myth, known only to a few readers of Abraxas, stated that the 'Narakunomicon' is a story within a story _within a story_. If uncovered it revealed a secret about the world.

Abraxas was a physicist and when he wasn't writing he was pondering the nature of the universe. Could it be that years and years alone in the woods with wolves revealed a knowledge about the world? And, could it be, that he inserted that truth into a narrative that was itself about the universe coughing up a portion of its mystery?

The fanatics I spoke with didn't pretend to know what the knowledge could have been - or how, exactly, it was extracted. They claim that they cannot know _and live_. People foolish enough to uncover it are destroyed by the revelation. They maintain it is a thought so profound the very fragile human mind crumbles with its realization. Death becomes an instant and grizzly thing.

I know it sounds ridiculous, Sokkie, yet it fits! Abraxas was influenced by Lovecraft. Now, that writer was obsessed with secret and forbidden knowledge. Cosmic catastrophe! And limits reigning mankind's ability to evolve. So doesn't it just appear natural that Abraxas would have tried to emulate Lovecraft like that? I mean - lord - it's called the 'Narakunomicon' a play on the 'Necronomicon' a book that was itself about mystical and insane revelations.

I began to think Abraxas himself was the author of the legend!

But the notebooks I found didn't allude to any myths and legends....

If there was going to be a secret and elaborate code that evidence would have been included with the outline of the plot - he was that detailed.

To be sure, my experience with Abraxas' Thundercats oeuvre was that he encoded signals (messages?) in very subtle ways. For example, in 'Aguila' (his last real Thundercats fic) Jackalman's insanity is indicated by the switch from ascending to descending alphabetical order - when he's sane and aware of the world lists are presented alphabetically, but, when he's insane lists are given by reverse alphabetical order. "_...__the skies were dull, lifeless...._" vs. "_...the onset of weight and dimension...._" Other times the presence or absence of contractions also indicated the narrator's state of mind. It's not too hard to conclude that a suitable manipulation of words could have been employed to disguise a message.

My Japanese contacts provided tantalizing clues about the nature of the 'Narakunomicon' and then - ha! - and then they located it! I needed to act fast - so - off I went across the ocean with my checkbook.

Reading it I see that Abraxas adhered to the outline I uncovered. It's set in the remote, distant future - so remote and so distant the work could be mistaken as original. The 'stage' within which the action unfolds is a water-world adorned with a vast, tropical archipelago.

It's the author's fantasy retreat: a wet, warm world with islands of the right proportion to permit its exiles time alone to contemplate their thoughts amid a vivid, distracting backdrop. It was mixed with the right amount of reality, too, as there were cities with industries and commerce to support the skeleton of an economy. These details are sprinkled about the text evenly. The story, with its peculiar and enigmatic construction, unfolds dropping these ideas organically as the narrator sees fit to remind the reader about facts that, of course, 'would be familiar'.

Everything is treated as matter-of-fact except about the location of the story's struggle - there, with wild, unambiguous language it's clear that the author's familiar with the territory albeit through daydream. It's an island with a thin pink ridge of sand, a wet and overgrown forest and a river snaking about its interior. It's not coincidence that a strange, hermit-like woman retreats into that island to escape the eyes of the world.

Mixed with that slice of paradise is a presentation of a dirty kind of alternative: the capitol of the world.

Abraxas was not fond of cities mostly because they were too crowded, loud and unpredictable. He was not against cities as a matter of principle, however, since that planet represented his natural ideal it was obvious that the capitol would be his metropolitan ideal. He was raised in the shadow of New York City and while he visited and lived by many other cities they didn't make the impression of Gotham.

So it's not surprising that throughout his fiction his cities retain a distinctive NYC flavor. 'Good Twin, Evil Twin' is a case-in-point - it's set in Tokyo yet its description amounts to a clone of NYC. Likewise in the 'Narakunomicon' the capitol of the world is a city framed by skyscrapers that recall, explicitly, the architecture of Gotham. Especially the headquarters of the police - its edifice could be taken right out of Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis'.

The narrator of the 'Narakunomicon' is a cop/criminal named Kornblueth. The tale itself is a study of fate - specifically - no matter the effort Kornblueth cannot escape that he is the seed of villainy. The story unfolds as dialogue with Kornblueth's confession to the Captain who's initially a colleague and finally a jailer.

Kornblueth starts honest although ambiguity taints his past which hinders his growth within the Department. The secret of his history is revealed by degrees as the veneer of respectability unravels. A metaphor (invoked by the narrator) draws parallels to Naraku when he pretends to be the kind, just Prince Kagewaki until the pelt falls....

Kornblueth is ashamed of his family - well - his _immediate_ family. He is shown to be fascinated with one Japanese ancestor. The curiosity about that figure and the details that emerge about the past raise questions about Kornblueth's state of mind. Along the way the device of connecting past with future is used to show the evolution of man - the way he changed through thousands of years of mixing and matching genetically.

A hint is dropped that his family is responsible for the Department's mistrust and disdain.... Soon it is obvious: his lineage is a conglomerate of the criminal. The majority of his kind is confined to jail. He was used by his uncle as a tool to commit crime and only escaped trial because of age.

He can't escape his family yet tries to by translating the journal of that Japanese ancestor. To shock and horror, though, he discovers that the man he looked up to was a Yakuza! (Incidentally, there is a picture that he gazes at from time to time, it shows the Japanese ancestor adorned with the tattoo of a spider.)

The tie that binds the two across the millennia is fate!

The Japanese ancestor wanted to be a poet and fancied he blended with the proper and just citizens of the country. But, someway, somehow, he developed an obsession with a woman. This led to the pursuit of crime and soon it became easier and easier to commit yet other felonies until he could not recall a life outside of the Yakuza. It seemed both to the man of the past and the future that fate trapped them within a web of crime....

That revelation is so important because Kornblueth is obsessed with a woman too - that mysterious hermit woman who retreated into that island.

The journal is like a mirror. Kornblueth sees his reflection, his action, yes, he's aware of the foreshadow _explicitly_. He tries hard to resist. But time and time again he's drawn into a world of deception just to study that woman.

The woman, named Kara, beguiles with a mix of strange, eerie features.

Kornblueth was sent to investigate a package Kara received thought to contain a stow-away. It was a coffin and, she claimed, contained the body of a husband. She explained she wanted to bury the man at the island/estate.

But - and he does not say it - x-rays issued by the cargo ship crew suggested the body moved significantly.

The meeting between Kornblueth and Kara reveal that the tentative, initial obsession is strong enough to inspire a circumvention of the law. Because without reviewing the content of the coffin he assures the Captain the case is closed. Yet he tells the woman the matter is unfinished - and that he will be back if demanded by the situation. He justifies it by saying (aloud) that she's a widow and should be given a time to grieve.

Obsession - everything comes back to obsession.

Kara awakens something within Kornblueth. What he terms a familiar, ancient curse. And, after dodging the subject a bit, he comes to terms with the fact that it's the appearance of the woman that inspires a connection to the past. Unlike virtually all of (future) humanity she bears unmistakable ethnic features. Namely, she is Japanese, a fact confirmed when he greets the woman with a custom taken out of the journal.

Kara is just as disturbed by Kornblueth. It seems he, too, awakens a mystery. But it's not sexual and, of course, since the 'Narakunomicon' is his story, told through his point of view, her side of the relationship is not developed. It comes across only as fear mixed with dread readily mistaken as caused by Kornblueth's status of authority.

Kornblueth is obsessed with the ancientness of Kara. She is so much - so much - like that picture of the ancestor whose journal he translated. Not only that, though, the obsession extends to the possessions of Kara. With further visits he sees that she keeps mementos just like he keeps artifacts. He discovers pictures framed about the walls of a parlor. He took a frame to examine it when she grabbed it out of his grip.

Afterward he spends nights in the woods with binoculars to assess the woman's routine habits. He wants to break into the house to study those pictures without restriction. He resists crossing that boundary - yet - coaxes a boy to break into the estate and steal a photograph. (Later it's revealed that the boy was a runaway who lived with Kornblueth _illegally_.)

Alone, he studies the artifact. It's ancient. Like his picture of his ancestor, it's many many thousands of years old. Hand-tinted. It depicts a newlywed Japanese couple. The man with a white and black (?) kimono draped with long, black hair. The woman dressed with a white and green uniform. And those eyes. Yes. That's what it comes down to - he realizes - those eyes. He puts the photograph away then stares into space.

The eyes were Kara's very own eyes!

This, perhaps, is the pivotal scene of the story. Because it sets his mind wandering, agonizing. What if the woman in the picture was Kara? How could it be possible?

Then, seriously, he considers the ramifications of immortality.

What if a man were able to live forever? Never growing old, never changing - what kind of life would it be?

He reasons such a man would be jealous of privacy; it would be logical, then, to escape into the edge of civilization. Just to be invisible! Especially when generations of intermixing makes a man look more and more alien....

"Truth was the thought often came to me especially while staring into space. To be ageless? To endure forever, eternally! The things we would be able to see and do. And the experiences! Tomes of experiences. What treasure of knowledge. I knew then and there that the possibility existed and what I would have sacrificed to join the ranks of the immortal. I must be honest - let me speak of it while the details are fresh - you say it is madness, Captain, you claim the universe does not work that way. But lo - everything we believe to be real is imagined. Man's philosophy is no greater, no better than whatever insects believe in. The universe owes us nothing!"

Kornblueth meditates by translating yet another passage of that journal.

The ancestor talked about a 'certain disastrous event' and a dream that followed it. The vision was set in the Feudal Era of Japan. He _was_ yet he _was not_ himself - he was another kind of entity altogether. He was seeking a jewel that promised to grant unlimited, god-like power if he wished it. Along the way he perpetrated unspeakable - no - unimaginable crime. Yet, he verged into victory when at the last, crucial moment that woman he was obsessed with grabs the jewel. He tried to fight but she was protected by a demon. The woman and the demon, bonded by love, uttered a wish _by accident_. And they were granted immortality. Then the vision ended with a scream as he faded into oblivion.

That forces Kornblueth to accept the obvious....

"As I sat by the window I felt confounded by the weight of the realization. I fathomed _and accepted_ the existence of a world beneath the world. A weird, parallel history. It cannot be coincidence - these encounters, these discoveries - it must be fate! And thus I fathomed the notion that across time and space from generation to generation I confronted these ideas again and again. How far did we run? That woman and I. How often did we meet?"

Kornblueth reasoned that there existed two different immortalities. The woman and demon were granted the usual kind, eternal youth and life. But there was another way to achieve that goal. If a will was strong enough, a mind might just endure the finality of death by persisting via reincarnation. Such a mind would be obsessed with the jewel and that woman and the power. It had to be obsessed beyond irrational by the relics of its former existence - undyingly so - else it would have vanished as time (and lives) passed.

And, with that, Kornblueth verges into accepting that he could be the victim of that other, alternative immortality....

He understands that he had been chasing that woman through lifetimes and it would be continuing without end. They, that woman and that demon, were linked by fate.

It was the description of the woman that left no doubt about it. The ancestor through that journal was specific, showing, no, betraying the depths of obsession. These things were just words across a page yet to Kornblueth it was like looking into a mirror.

Then he grows curious about the 'event' and then that leads to the demon who accompanied the woman into immortality.

Looking again at the picture stolen out of the estate he understands he needs to look inside the coffin.

From that point to the end of the story Kornblueth unravels. And we are lead to conclude (along with Kornblueth) that this was inevitable. Yet, if we stop to think, it's coincidence misinterpreted: the warning exposed by the journal, the obsession with that woman matching the events experienced by a remote, distant ancestor which itself was the basis of a subtle kind of obsession (all throughout the story we see how Kornblueth attempts to morph into that ancestor: learning the language and customs of Japan, dressing like a man of that age, and, of course, his descent into depravity). It's easy to interpret the story as a case of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

He sneaks into the island/estate and, while creeping through the basement looking at the coffin, he gets assaulted by a 'creature'. It gazes - he flees. Outside he gets tackled. Again face to face - now under the light of the stars - he recognizes the specter. Although now its hair was white, its eyes were a glowing, electric shade, and its fangs and claws were not human.

"How long are you going to follow us? Forever? Forever?" it seethed _in Japanese._

It cannot be denied and any, alternative interpretation shatters. It drives Kornblueth insane while it cements the truth to the reader. That woman is not Kara but Kagome and that demon is Inuyasha. And Kornblueth is Naraku reincarnated. The drama climaxes with Usher-like vehemence (complete with thunder and lightning while the island/estate flames).

Kornblueth concludes with a statement that convinces the Captain of his insanity:

"Captain, what of it? Oh, you arrest me? Oh, you lock me into a cell? Fool, weak, blind fool! And what prison is capable of holding me? This, _life_, is nothing! With a thought _it_ ends yet _I _return. I will be born again, free of your prison and your tyranny! Free, again, to resume my quest! Go, I dare you, I swear I will be free when your grave receives your body. While you - all of you - crumble into the void I endure the rigor of death with the power of my mind! I don't need a jewel -"

Kornblueth is led away yet his raving, lunatic voice echoes through the hallways.

Abraxas finishes the narrative with the fragments of a report given to the Captain - words that state Kara and the coffin cannot be located anywhere within the ruins of the island/estate.

When broken act by act it's a disturbingly simple story. But it's the plethora of detail and insight that gives it that 'flavor'. It's remarkable that the story resembles it's very first outline.

Of course it's everything I thought it would be - despite knowing what would be happening a priori - I can't wait until you read it. Sokkie! It's tame enough for your oh-so-delicate sensibilities!

Well, I'm six hours into the flight and I'm bored to death!

(pause...to be creative...well, it was a pretty long-winded rant, no?)

It's me, again, your Snow Fox! My sweet molestable, kissable warrior! (Please wear that makeup again!)

Er, I forgot what I was going to say!

Ah, yes, I think I understand what could be Abraxas' code. It's not the wording - it's a very relaxed and informal style - so it's not about sane vs. insane. (Well, Kornblueth isn't depicted as insane....) I looked elsewhere. See, I remember something about his library I thought was odd, volumes of encyclopedias and whatnot were not ordered properly. At first I thought it could be a joke until I noticed a pattern. By number they were arranged: by squares (1, 4, 9, 16...), by digits of pi (3, 14, 15...), by e (2, 7, 18, 27...).

I applied that pattern. I counted the words but that was a bust. I counted the letters - I jotted the 1st, 4th, 9th, 16th, 25th, 36th letters - that led to 'THISXW'. Thus only the first four numbers of a series were significant. Same with digits of pi and e.

It's taken about ten minutes but it's daunting. I only find the letters and not the spaces. Not the punctuations. That's the hard part, to make sense of the letters, I've got to know where to break them into words and into sentences. Still, I get the phrase:

"This is nature's record...."

Wait, let me recount:

"This is Naraku's secret...."

Sorry about that!

I'm so proud of myself, Sokkie, I think by the end of the trip I may get a whole entire paragraph ready.

Yes, it's about Naraku, about his specific kind of immortality.

Sokkie, I was right, and it looks like it's got to do with physics. It seems he's come up with a story within a story that involves Naraku trying to gain life (or existence?) through the words of that story. It's as if reading that story allows the demon to live within the mind of the reader.

Neat. :P

(off to decode another page....)

Sokkie - I do not want to go further. Lord...where is your mercy fled? If I knew it would be _this_ I would not have read anything by that madman! I get the feeling I am not reading fiction. This - this whatever this is - it's too scientific, too perfect, too...could it be that....

Oh god!

Sokkie, I love you, remember that, remember me the way I used to be!

* * *

That's the entire, unedited email. Seconds, just seconds, after Jammie sent it he stood and rushed out of the exit. He was clutching that book when he jumped into the Pacific.

I don't know what to believe, guys, I - this stays between us, OK?

Remember, his memorial is Thursday, I want to see you all soon. Let me thank you again for your support. Stay safe. Stay well.

-Sokka

**END**


End file.
